Wikipedia talk:Recentism

I agree this is needed. Same thing with articles on millenium-old topics being overwhelmed with fictional and video game adaptions. We might want to explicitly point out that recentism is bad, though. DreamGuy

I mentioned this term twice in talk and here it is. It's, like, self-fulfilling. Actually occured to me when thinking about the Iraq war. Yes, big event but it's spawned so many soapboxes I lose track. See edits and talk on Pat Robertson for another example. Marskell 23:30, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone cite any source for the claim that this is "generally considered a negative trait of Wikipedia"? This page has existed for less than 3 days and has drawn only 2 editors to contribute to the page. It is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline, it is not even a proposed policy or guideline. I think it is unfortunate to make claims that aren't substantiated. Having said that, I would like to comment on the merits of this idea itself. I agree that we should not clutter up an article such as New Orleans or Louisiana Superdome with too much information about a current event. However, I disagree that we should avoid creating articles such as Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. On the contrary, creating this side articles is exactly what we should do to avoid cluttering up long-standing articles with so-called recentisms. Johntex 17:11, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

your feedback has been integrated into the text. MPS 17:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, it isn't a policy but it gives a name to a frequent complaint. The first comment on the page you mention John is "is this article really necessary?" I notice

are all articles. Hm. There is something to be said for brevity... Marskell 18:34, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also drawn to contribute to this page, but haven't had a chance to formalize a contribution. I think it's important to have some guidelines for this phenomenon and I hope that the discussion here will make it possible to create some. Dystopos 20:25, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a relevant concept?

A certain user over on the Talk:Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans page thinks this recentism is just my opinion. I would like to hear some votes of support for the phenomenon of recentism (sort of like the opposite of a VFD). After editing wikipedia for more than a year, I feel that this is a legitimate concept so I created an article for it. Am I full of $^%# or does recentims make sense to anyone else? MPS 20:34, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should have a vote. But I do think it's a relevant concept. I was shocked to see how much bullshit people had written about Terri Schaivo--someone who in five years will be completely non-notable. Not even a footnote in history. Yet we have reams of information about the woman, while whole historical periods are substubs.—thames 20:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Had Wikipedia existed during the Roman times, presumably there would be more detail in minute Roman-era pages. I certainly don't think we should shorten articles because others are short - we should lengthen articles when we have the information to do so. Someone will find this stuff useful, and I hope WP is around a thousand years from now in some form as a historical record for someone's graduate thesis on an obscure person in the 21st Century. — ceejayoz ^{★ .com} 06:18, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think the importance of information and its historical value is always relative, subjective and inconsistent, so its hard to say definitvely whether this is a relevant concept or not. I will say that this article seems to have a very NPOV tone to it. I'm more in favor of including greater details for everything, recent events and historical events, in wikipedia. If all we're creating here is another encyclopedia restating the exact same information found in those texts, then why even bother with wikipedia's existence? jcomp489

I can see your point, jcomp489. I think the "core" values of NPOV and verifiable information are by far the most important guidelines for limiting WP's content. At the same time, "recency bias" is worth recognizing and discussing so that when brave editors sludge into a big logjam of highlights from every conflicting news report in order to establish a modicum of perspective, that they have some editorial consensus to point to. The example I've gotten sucked into is the Natalee Holloway article which has seen additions about every twist and turn of a long-lasting investigation that most people agree is barely notable (except for the media sensation surrounding it). At some point, I expect that article will be greatly reduced in detail just because red herrings and false leads shed no light on the facts of the case. I'd appreciate some discussion on the issue in general terms to guide that process once the passage of time makes it feasible Dystopos 21:46, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is definetively a relevant concept. Even though I believe that the effects of katrina in New Orleans article is necesary, there are others that are simply ridiculous. My personal opinion is that some of this recentist articles become simply blogs for certain users. We should do something about it. <<Coburn_Pharr>> 22:10, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's a problem. Witness the deluge of activity on 7 July over the 2005 London bombings, or the tsunami, or New Orleans. They do become blogs for certain users. Current events more properly belong at Wikinews, anyway. The sensible thing to do is to leave such articles well alone, let the knee jerk editors blurge it with conspiracy theories, trivia and irrelevancies, then come back in two weeks once they've gone away, pare the article down, and rewrite it. Proto t c 13:37, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"Recentism" definitely exists; I don't think that a vote is necessary to establish that. However, I'm not sure what formal action is necessary and/or desireable. Facilities already exist for pruning out irrelevant content. If it bothers people that articles like Terri Schiavo have incredibly large amounts of content, the solution is to pay attention to work neglected topics, as per ceejayoz. --Bletch 21:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Status of article

To be clear: I mentioned this topic and MPS added it after converstation. There was no attempt to slyly add a wiki guideline or to get around peer review. Conversation was: "I think...", "You think? I'll add that cause I think so too" "OK." This wouldn't be getting hits if people don't broadly understand the complaint. This is a problem and it should be talked about (hurricane or no). I'm removing the controversy tag because no one has properly stated why the idea is controversial. Marskell 23:40, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I added the NPOV tage because (see my above comments), honestly, if it's not a wiki guideline then it's just an article, and as it stands it's an Op-ed piece. The "debate" section is completely one-sided, and then is followed by suggestions as to how to reduce recentism. I'm not saying the article is invalid or "controversial," but there's all of one sentence in the entire article saying how and why recentism might not be the worst thing in the world of wikipedia. So I'm going to add it back as I think it's worthy of discussion at least. I won't, however, get involved in an "edit war" or whatever those things are called, so if someone arbitrarily removes it again I won't bother adding it. jcomp489

"All of one sentence in the entire article saying..." Then edit the article right? There's now seven people on here broadly agreeing that this is an issue so I don't see how it qualifies as an Op-ed piece. The fact that's not a guideline doesn't mean it shouldn't be here. Scroll through the Category:Wikipedia--lots of odds and ends. As noted below I think that it's one part of a larger problem with proportion and relative emphasis. Marskell 16:59, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be here, hence no Afd or Vfd or whatever it's being called now. I'm saying that it's clearly a one-sided peice. The validity of the article is not what I'm questioning, but it's present standing is hardly balanced. And I would rather not, for this article, edit it one piece at a time or edit solely based on my opinion as opposed to balanced, researched fact regarding recentism in genearal, as well as its occurrences on wikipedia. It would take a while, I think, to piece together everything about the article that needs to develop. Perhaps Dystopos is correct in that, as an article clearly in its infancy, it maybe doesn't warrant an NPOV tag so much as a tag saying "Hey somebody, come help develop this largely lopsided, embryonic article." But I know of no such tag, and an NPOV calls attention to the fact that this article needs attention. Anybody reading the talk pages after coming here will hopefully then see where I'm coming from. That's all I'm trying to say. jcomp489

I'm going to take a quick stab at presenting another side to Recentism.

—thames 17:28, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, looks great. Thanks. jcomp489

I haven't participated in the policy process before, but I assumed that this page was a place to collaborate on an editorial consensus about how to deal, as editors, with Recentism. If broad consensus were reached, it would gradually accrete "guideline" status. Perhaps there's another process for this that I'm missing, but certainly on a wiki guidelines don't emerge fully-formed from the head of Jupiter or Jimbo or anyone else. I don't think an NPOV tag is warranted, but maybe there's a tag about "embryonic policy discussions" or something that is. Dystopos 17:12, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Page History

Just a few comments, starting with this quote from the project page:

"After "recentist" articles have calmed down, the instigating news story has dropped from the Main Page and the front pages of newspapers, and the number of edits per day has dropped to a reasonable minimum, concerned Wikipedians ought to initiate comprehensive rewrites. Most article can be condensed to keep only the most important information, the wider notable effects of an event, and links to major issues to which the article is related. Most of the timeline content and day-to-day updates with minor details can safely be excised."

This "rewriting" after the initial editing storm has passed sounds reasonable. My only concern would be whether the history of the pages will always be preserved. There are many cases where watching a page evolve and go through many stages and styles is absolutely fascinating and, in conjunction with the Talk pages, allows the reader (if they want) to follow controversies and debates and sometimes find out far more about a subject than the "dry bones" of the encyclopaedic entry. As long as the Talk pages and History pages were ALWAYS availble, then I would agree with such rewriting at a later date.

And the relevance of articles WILL change over time. I absolutely agree that articles will need rewriting, but I strongly believe that the different versions (few weeks afterwards, 1 year afterwards, 5 years afterwards, 10 years afterwards, 50 years afterwards, 100 years afterwards, 1000 years afterwards etc.) must be preserved. This allows a reader to effectively read the POV of Wikipedians at the time, and in the years afterwards. No mater how NPOV we try to be, this historical bias will still show through, and should be preserved.

Failing that, the editor who rewrites should consider if the "detail" and "timeline content" should be put somewhere else, in a side article, or subpage. Effectively saying (a) "here is the main article, the encyclopedic summary" and (b) "here are the details that were complied from many different sources by Wikipedians who were there at the time". The latter could be a valuable historical resource.

I write this as someone who contributed briefly to the Indian Ocean tsunami page, a bit more to the London bombings of July 7 page, and find Wikipedia a useful source of _background_ information on other current events like Hurricane Katrina (Wikinews moves on too soon for my liking). I use Wikipedia both to read encyclopedic articles AND to see a flood of news from around the world be edited into a readable current-affairs article by Wikipedians (NOT a news article - I go to news websites for that).

Finally, it is fairly obvious that I agree that "recentism" exists, but I wish someone could think of a better name for it. Maybe 'Historical Perspective' or something? Reflecting the way that articles are written differently depending on how close you are to the events in time. Carcharoth 14:18, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Living Documents

Found a comment on the Talk page of the Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans article that perfectly sums up my attitude to "recentism":

"...the long-term value of this and the other articles about Hurricane Katrina is the historical record it provides about this major event in US history. [...] A month from now, let's edit this article to be a proper encylopedia entry. Today, let it be a living document and let it serve the needs of people needing information about this event." (unsigned comment) Carcharoth 14:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I opened up the NYT today and they had a special section on Hurricane Katrina. It had a detailed timeline that did the same sort of play-by-play that recentist wikipedia articles on Katrina do. ("on August 28 ... such and such happened, on August 29 at 5PM such and such happened.") News-blogging on wikipedia is definitely a good way to synthesize what's going on, but the really specific set of information created belongs somewhere other than in what I consider the term "encyclopedia" to encompass. My POV is that we need some sort of wiki-yearbook or wiki-zeitgeist project that fills the gap between wikinews (Socks the cat gets stuck in a tree yesterday) and wikipedia (according to biologists cats tend to get stuck in trees). Wikizeitgeist would be ...2005:Cats getting stuck in trees... "in 2005, a trend emerged where lots of cats got stuck in trees, for example, let me list them all 1,2,3,4,5..." MPS 00:32, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just found this...The world in 2004. hmm... looks kinda like a yearbook MPS 01:10, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]